


yet seem quite

by hellodeer



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, and everyone is a lesbian, everyone is a girl - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 11:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8246527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellodeer/pseuds/hellodeer
Summary: In the morning, the sun peeking through the curtains, Alex opens the door to Eliza in socks and a t-shirt, teaching the dog how to play piano.





	

In the morning, the sun peeking through the curtains, Alex opens the door to Eliza in socks and a t-shirt, teaching the dog how to play piano.

“Hey,” Alex says, yawns.

“Good morning,” Eliza smiles, going to Alex and touching her face, kissing her lips. She’s warm and soft like someone who is very tired, kisses like she’s falling asleep. Eliza smiles against her mouth. “Go to bed,” she says.

“Not yet,” Alex replies. “Haven’t finished preparing for the debate.”

“You were in the library all night,” Eliza raises her eyebrows, takes Alex by the hand and she goes, sits them both on the couch.

“Yeah,” Alex says. “But Jefferson and Madison found me there and pestered me for hours, I couldn’t get rid of them.”

“That so,” Eliza says. She pushes at Alex’s shoulder one, two, three times. Alex rolls her eyes but lies her head on Eliza’s lap, her thick brown hair tangling in Eliza’s fingers.

Alex hums. The dog jumps on Alex’s chest, resting his head between her breasts.

“Could have been worse,” Eliza whispers to Alex’s closing eyelids. “Could have been Ariana pestering you.”

“Burr’s not gonna be a bad lawyer, actually,” Alex mumbles, and falls asleep.

Eliza takes Alex’s hand, the one not trapped under the dog, and kisses each one of her knuckles.

*

Alex’s friends—

“They’re not my friends,” she says, frowning deeply between Eliza’s legs. “They’re classmates. Colleagues, maybe.”

“You’re with them all the time,” Eliza says. “You study together, eat together, you even went to Tatiana’s house in Virginia last summer.”

Alex argues that statement for about half an hour, and it’s only when Eliza says “Oh my god, now is not the time to talk about this!” that Alex rolls her eyes and goes back to licking her clit.

Anyway, Alex’s friends are supposed to be geniuses, the very best Columbia Law School has seen in years. Which doesn’t stop them from being assholes, Eliza supposes, when she arrives at the bar just in time to hear Jessica say “I mean, maybe war is not always a bad choice.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day,” Eliza says, going around the table to kiss Alex and sit next to her.

“Don’t mind Madison, she’s always a douchebag,” Alex smiles.

“Fuck you, Hamilton,” Jessica scowls.

They form teams for the trivia game, Tatiana and Ariana and Jessica, Joanna and Alex and her. Eliza feels a bit misplaced, like she always does when she’s with them, hearing about professors she doesn’t know and people she’s never seen and books she’s never read. Alex and Joanna share inside jokes and smiles and small touches, and Eliza wondered about them for a while. Still does, sometimes.

In the end their team wins, but only because Eliza knew the answer to “which musical won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2008” was In The Heights.

 

*

Alex gets an internship at professor Washington’s firm. The pay is good, the connects are better. The work keeps her from home for long hours; sometimes Eliza goes days without seeing her face.

So Eliza cooks, enough for two, leaves notes in the fridge’s door for Alex to find — _pasta today!_ and _drink some water!_ and _don’t forget you’re human and need to rest!_ and _i love you_. Alex replies with _:)_ and _will do_ and _i’ll sleep when i’m dead_ and _i love you, too_.

Eliza goes to class. She writes essays. She calls her father and her sisters, she sleeps, she showers, she walks the dog.

“I know, buddy,” she tells the dog when he’s crying, sniffing Alex’s side of the bed. “I miss her too.”

And Alex is there one day, actually inside the cozy walls of their apartment for more than three hours at time, but only because professor Washington got angry and sent home.

“I swear,” Alex rants, pacing her living room floor. “She’ll see that she’s _wrong_ , and that she needs me, and she’ll call me back.”

Eliza watches calmly from the piano, where she had been teaching the dog to play again. She sips her cocoa and smiles, says “I’ll never be enough for you, will I?”

Alex doesn’t hear, keeps going on and on about work.

Eliza turns back to the piano and plays The Funeral March until Alex shuts up.

*

Eliza is not stupid. She’s seen the way Angelica looks at Alex’s thin wrists and long legs, the way her sister’s face flushes when she argues with Alex about the law, how she moves close enough to touch but never reaches out to do so.

It was Angelica who introduced the two of them, when Eliza was still a sophomore at Columbia, trailing after her sister to a boring lawyer party.

“This is Alex,” she had said, voice distant and sad, which Eliza didn’t notice at the time. “She’s a classmate.”

“It’s an honor to meet you,” Alex had said, then kissed Eliza’s hand, and her smile was wicked and feral, and Eliza fell. Soon she noticed everybody fell for Alex a little bit.

Angelica transferred to Harvard right after helping Alex and Eliza move in together, carrying boxes and laughing and assembling furniture and toasting with paper cups, “To your new life.”

She appears on their doorstep on a Thursday, no warning.

“Is dad okay?” is the first thing out of Eliza’s mouth when she takes in her sister’s deep, angry frown.

“He’s fine,” she says. “Have you seen Alex’s Facebook status?”

Which is an odd question. Alex likes to make long, wordily status daily, which Eliza always reads and likes, shares sometimes, or comments and turns off notifications to avoid the update every time Tatiana makes a disagreeable comment.

But she’s been in the library all day today, reviewing her application for the Teachers College, phone turned off. She tells her sister as much, and wordlessly Angelica hands her her own phone, open on the Facebook app.

Alex’s status starts like this: _Of all the vile attempts which have been made to injure my character, that which has been lately revived in the Columbia Law School Magazine is the most vile._

*

It’s a rough couple of months after that. Angelica stays with her for a week, and they cry and laugh and talk and burn all the terrible, terrible poems Alex’s written Eliza over the years.

Alex stays at Joanna’s, which hurts some more, like pouring salt over an open wound.

Eliza, whose favorite coffee is served at the campus cafe where Maria Reynolds works, buys a coffee machine and learns to make her own.

Then one day Alex comes by to walk the dog. Thirty minutes later she calls Eliza in a panic, saying he’s been hit by a car.

The dog dies at the vet, Eliza weeping openly over his body while Alex cries in silence.

At home, a few days later, Alex asks Eliza for forgiveness. She lets Alex grovel at her feet for maybe three minutes, then feels bad about it.

“Get up,” she sighs.

Alex does. She usually looms very tall, but now her shoulders are hunched, her back curved. Eliza doesn’t like seeing her sad, and Eliza doesn’t like being sad, either.

She walks to the piano, sits on the bench. She pats the space next to her and Alex comes.

She begins to play the French numbers song. It was the only song the dog knew how to play.

“I’m angry at you,” she says. “Very angry.”

“Yes,” Alex replies, voice small.

“You hurt me deeply. And you hurt my sister.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sleeping with Joanna?”

“Laurens? No.”

“Have you ever?”

Alex swallows. “Not while we’ve been together.”

Eliza plays the C, then the F, then the G.

“Okay”, she says.

“Okay?”

Alex is looking at her with hopeful, pleading eyes. Eliza pities her, and misses her, and hates her, and loves her.

“It’s gonna take some time,” she says. She takes one of Alex’s hands and holds it over the keys. “But okay.”

Together they play Clair de Lune, Alex hitting the only two keys she knows.


End file.
